Musical Comedian Jon Long Brings His Debut Show To The Edinburgh Fringe

Having been gigging and acting as MC at London's best clubs - Angel Comedy, Top Secret, Comedy Store etc - for the last five years, and having won a string of accolades in the meantime (Winner - Audience Favourite at the Musical Comedy Awards 2016, Winner - London Comedy Store King Gong 2015) musical comedian Jon Long is bringing his debut solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe 2019. You know, and he knows, and we alllll know what that means. Cue the introductory hour of perceived wisdom that a Fringe debut requires...

Meet Jon. Jon is a lapsed Catholic, recovering alcoholic, straight, white, millennial, cis male. Jon has got some good gags and even better songs about his upbringing, his beliefs, and his disabled left arm. Hold on though... what does any of that really matter!? Isn't all this just an exercise in navel-gazing? Jon is, first and foremost, a human just like you; and he's ready to admit that all the introspection might well just be a diversion from the large green elephant in the room - he is a creature that is destroying the earth.

A planet-killing machine.

Just like you.

However, it's not just stories in the news, passionate political protests or the worryingly warm February weather that has opened Jon's reluctant eyes. No. It's far more personal than that. For the last four years, Jon has spent a disproportionately large amount of his time showing apathetic school children and enthusiastic WI groups around a waste and recycling centre. What started as a part-time job to fit around his growing comedy career became a first-hand insight into the ever-mounting crisis that everybody knows about but that everybody wishes they could ignore. Watching a million people's waste come and go each day has no small impact on the psyche. Now, with an above average experience in environmental education, Jon is suitably qualified to diagnose his own failures.

Planet-Killing Machine is two shows in one - for the second half, Jon takes audiences into what he hopes we can all agree is more salient territory (...and just as entertaining - he's used up all his funniest jokes about himself by this point anyway). Thought-provoking, interactive and imaginative, Jon wants to talk about what we need to get done if we're going to address climate change in our lifetime, and if that means kidnapping the entire audience to start a new self-sustaining micro-community... so be it.

Jon Long performs 'Planet-Killing Machine' at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from 31st July - 26th August. For tickets and more information: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/jon-long-planet-killing-machine

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